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A Tentative Report on" American" and "Canadian" Courses in Canadian University Curricula WAYNE COLE, VIRGINIA ROCK, AND ROBERT L. WHITE Two years ago, the secretary of the c.A.A.s. circulated a questionnaire among Canadian university departments in the humanities and social sciencesin an effort to find out the extent of II American Studies" course offerings in Canadian curricula. Responses to the questionnaires were slow in coming back, the length and complexity of the questionnaire made analysis of the responses onerous and tricky, and the secretary's time was taken up by other chores; consequently, replies to the questionnaire were but partially tabulated when, during the spring of 1969, Professors Robin Mathews and James Steele raised the question of whether Canadian universities were being "de-Canadianized" by the recent influx of foreign faculty members, many of them American. The unwinnowed data was becoming outdated, and to our minds it was now contextually irrelevant. It now seemed important to know not merely the number of II American Studies" courses offered in Canadian universities , but also the relative importance of such courses in various departments; we were particularly interested to know something of the ratio of such courses to "Canadian Studies" courses. We prepared, then, a one-page questionnaire (a copy follows on page 40) whose brevity and directness would, we hoped, prompt ready response - a questionnaire designed to elicit information about course offerings and student enrollments at three levels: first and second year, third and fourth year, and graduate study. We sent the questionnaire to chairmen of departments of English, History, Political Science, Economics, and Geography in thirty-seven Canadian universities and colleges. (We were advised by colleagues that it would be bootless to query Sociology departments, inasmuch as courses in sociology didn't lend themselves to categorizations of the sort we were asking for, and that sociologists would bridle at being asked to make distinctions of the sort implied by the questionnaire.) It may be that the questionnaire was more simplistic than simple, and we ought to have made clearer what we meant by "material." Nevertheless, we did receive a high percentage THE CANADIAN REVIEW OF AMERICAN STUDIES, VOL. 1 1 NO. 1, SPRING 1970 4>0 University: _____________ _ Department: ______________ _ Number of Number of courses with courses with 1007. U.S. 100% Canadian material material 1st + 2nd Year Courses Total Number of Students Enrolled 3rd + 4th Year Courses Total Number of Students Enrolled Graduate Courses Total Number of Students Enrolled Number of courses with 757. U.S. material Total Number of Courses _________ _ Offered 1969-70 Number of Number of Number of Number of Number of courses with courses with courses with courses with courses with 757. Canadian 507. u.s. 50% Canadian 257. U.S. 257. Canadian material material material material material Name and Position of Person _______________ _ Making out Report: __________________ _ of usable replies from departments of History and English, and a fair numberfrom departments o~Political Science. History departments were the least perturbed by misgivings about the questionnaire; twenty-one returned completed questionnaires, with only one History chairman responding in a fashion such as this: "We at ~-- find it quite impossible to categorize courses in the way requested in the questionnaire." English departments were not as compliant . One chairman, who did complete it, was of the opinion that "this is a bad questionnaire and a nuisance"; another, who remarked that he and his "Canadian colleagues [had] experienced a lively resentment against the recent kafuffle over 'de-Canadianization,' 11 returned the questionnaire "under protest"; and another loftily informed us that he had no interest "in creating statistical ammunition for this academic confrontation, which is itself hardly relevant to the discipline of English." Still, in spite of perturbations on the part of some of our respondents, we received completed questionnaires from twenty-three departments of English. Departments of Political Science, compared to History and English, responded less enthusiastically. While not many wrote back to object to the questionnaire, only thirteen departments returned them completed . We believe, though, that these thirteen provide a significant body of information and we present it to our readers. Returns from departments of Geography and Economics, however, were...

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